When a silver halide color photographic light-sensitive material is, after imagewise exposure, colordeveloped, the dye-forming coupler(s) (hereinafter, referred to as simply coupler) in the light-sensitive material reacts with the oxidation product of an aromatic primary amine developing agent to form color images.
Recently, couplers which are used for silver halide color photographic materials are required to have various properties. For example, the couplers are required to have properties such as excellent stability, processability, coloring property, and hue of the color images formed therefrom. The color images formed therefrom should be fast, able to be produced at low cost and excellent in production qualities, etc.
Hitherto, phenolic couplers and naphtholic couplers have been used as cyan couplers. In particular, 1-naphthol couplers are excellent in color reproduction since the colored dyes formed therefrom have an absorption maximum (.lambda.max) at a long wavelength region and have less side absorption in the green region. In addition 1-naphthol couplers excellent in coloring property can be produced at a low cost and are excellent in production qualities. Thus, such cyan couplers have been widely used for color negative photographic materials.
However, conventional phenolic couplers and naphtholic couplers, in particular 2-alkylcarbamoyl-1-naphtholic couplers have a disadvantage that if a bleach liquid or blix liquid in a bleach step or blix step in a color photographic process is fatigued or has a weak oxidative power, color images having sufficient quality cannot be obtained. This phenomenon is considered to be caused by the reductive fading of cyan dyes by a ferrous ion formed in the bleach or blix step. Also, the cyan images formed from these couplers have a disadvantage of being low in color fastness.
The former disadvantage in naphtholic couplers can be eliminated by changing the substituent of the carbamoyl group at the 2-position from an alkyl group to an aryl group to convert the couplers to 2-arylcarbmoyl-1-naphtholic couplers (as described, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,488,193). However, the latter disadvantage of the couplers has not yet been sufficiently solved and hence it is not always desired from the point of image stability to use only the naphthlic coupler as a cyan coupler in color photographic materials.
On the other hand, in regard to naphtholic couplers, the 1-naphtholic couplers having a specific substituent at the 5-position as disclosed in Japanese Patent Application (OPI) No. 237448/85, and European Patent 161626 (the term "OPI" as used herein means an "unexamined published application") have successfully eliminated the above-described two disadvantages and hence are excellent in performance but also have the following disadvantages. That is, one of the disadvantages is that when a color photographic material containing the coupler is exposed to light for a long period of time after processing, brown coloring or stain is formed. Another disadvantage is that the couplers are insufficient in coloring property and are lacking in aptitude for high-speed light-sensitive materials which have been required recently. In particular, the former disadvantage is a large problem since the stain formed causes the reduction in color reproducibility of the color photographic materials.